بَرکَت

Poems by Elyas Alavi

Translation from Persian/Farsi to English by Dr. Zuzanna Olsweska and Fatemeh Shams.

1

Conversation

I told my sister

Stay away from Kabul’s bazaars

Stay away from town squares

And the areas of high-ranking officials

She told me:

But here, Death is like dust in the air

Even if you close all the windows

Eventually, it gets into your room.

2

پیراهن سرخ به تو می آید

یا تو به پیراهن سرخ؟

شگوفه ها را باد باردار می کند

یا زیبایی تو؟

The red shirt suits you

or do you suit the red shirt?

What pollinates the blossoms?

the wind or your beauty?

3

محبوبم نه اینکه غمهایم بیشمار نیستند

و دستانم تنها نیست

اما عشق تو توانم می دهد

تا برخیزم

در آینه نگاه کنم

و به خیابان شوم.

My love

It’s not that my sorrows are not countless

And my hands are not alone

But your love gives me strength

To look in the mirror

And go for an outing.

4

به دریا که نگاه می کنی

دریا نیز به زیبایی تو نگاه می کند

نزدیکش نشو

می ترسم

به لحظه ای دستانش را باز کند

و تو را با خود ببرد.

When you look at the sea

She too is looking at your beauty

Don’t go close

I’m afraid

For the moment that she will open her arms

And take you away.

5

استرالیا استرالیا

در تو زاده نشدم

و ردّ ِ دستان پدرم بر درختانت نیست

اما تو وطن منی

و امنی

چون آغوش دور ِ مادرم.

Australia, Australia

I wasn’t born in you

And the hand prints of my father

Don’t show on your trees

But you are my homeland

And you are safe

Like my mother’s far embrace.

6

در پستوی هر خانه
کاش دروازه ای بود
به جنگل ِ سکوت
می شد برآمد گاهی
و یک پیاله چای ِ بی غم نوشید
و باز پس آمد
به این پیر ِ پتیاره،
زندگی.

If only in the back room of every house
there was a gateway to a forest of silence
where you could go from time to time
to drink a cup of sorrow-free tea

then come back
to this old shrew,
life.

7

Excuse

Be my excuse tonight

little bird!

If I were God

I would give silence to the night

sorrow to mankind

Moses to the Israelites

and you I would keep for myself

If I were God

I would set you up on Everest.

Be my excuse tonight

little bird

Perhaps I’ll be affected by a melody. 

8

Your Beauty

You are sitting on a step
With your beauty
Your blue shoes
Your red jacket.

The cold?
Stares at your cheeks
Does not even blink
In the laziness of the afternoon
Your beauty is freshly brewed tea
For tired commuters

You have gone
Your beauty is still sitting on the step.

9

A Journey to Kandahar

We hugged each other tightly

and quickly let go.

With no hope of seeing each other we cried,

                                                     “Hope to see you soon.”

Mother laughed:

                                “Surely this isn’t a journey to Kandahar?”

And we, too, smiled bitter, bitter smiles.

Then         

The train’s whistle blew, mournfully

A thousand yearning travellers waved from that side

A thousand yearning friends waved from this side.

We went home

And sought refuge in the dark rooms

Mother

Threw her arms around the porch

Took one look at the blossoms in the orchard

And loudly, loudly sobbed.

Note: “A journey to Kandahar” is a Persian idiom for a long, difficult journey. There is an additional level of

irony here because for Afghans, a journey could well be a journey to Kandahar, although this one is not.

10

Where is the homeland?

The homeland, a wooden table

At which we drank tea

And breathed a sigh of relief

just before the immigration police caught us.

where is the homeland?

An old boat

Adrift on the wild tresses of the Aegean Sea

“Pray that the sea calms down

The clouds calm down

The winds calm down!”

the old captain was saying

just before we danced among the waves.

The homeland

A detention camp in Torbat-e Jam

With high cement walls

With a high barbed wire fence

With long queues

Bread, a letter, shame.

The homeland

A distant café in London

Amidst fog and smoke and darkness

In which people with troubled shadows

And faded, lost eyes

Breathe bitter, bitter breaths

And down their cups of sorrow.

Safid Sang

Quetta

Istanbul

Nauru

The homeland perhaps is a hole in a cemetery in Adelaide

That waits hungrily for my thirsty lips

Where is the homeland?

11

Another kind

 That night

As you lay down

I looked at you

And took my head in my hands.

I thought: how can you be sleeping in my room?

We had been apart twenty-one months.

A piece of moon drizzled in from the window

and I could see your body, tender as a ghazal.

Mozart, sitting a little further away on a plastic chair, played piano,

many others watched from cracks in the ceiling’s woods.

Watched you for the entire night

in all your beauty.

Morning was morning of departure.

You asked: will I come back?

I did not look at you.

“I do not know”- I said.

And sat in the taxi.

The taxi left,

I did not look back.

Our love was of another kind,

Gloomy, concealed.

12

She Had Beautiful Eyes

She had beautiful eyes

and the old men of the quarter all wished

that they had been born later

close your eyes

The world isn’t worth looking at

Nobody knows

     With what crime the history of your eyes began

You were nine years old

When your brothers raped you

You had to be buried alive

Father

     was a sacred monkey

The Bedouin mysteriously kidnapped you

And the taverns flourished and trade was brisk

A girl collecting stones in the folds of her skirt

Saw you for the last time in Jerusalem.

Years later the remains of your eyelids were discovered in the Lascaux caves

Hitler hunted for your eyes among Jewish women

     When a bad air hung over Paris

                               A bad air over Paris

Sometimes to stay alive you have to smile

                                                     shout slogans, write poetry

And fearing the officials of the migration office

You came to Iran along with the Polish refugees

And Shamlu* wrote:

Behind the pupils of your eyes

     which prisoner’s cry is there

     That throws freedom onto swollen lips

     Like a red rose?

A thousand years later

For a thousand years

In the mudbrick palaces of Kabul

     You had to bury your eyes beneath a burqa

And that was too much for the Buddha…

                             He committed suicide.

If only you had known

the old men of the quarter all wished

     that you had been born earlier.

* Note: Ahmad Shamlu was a major modern Persian poet.

I wish grapes would ripen

I wish grapes would ripen

The world become drunk

Streets stumble

Brush against each other,

Presidents and beggars.

I wish borders could become drunk

and Mohammad Ali could see his mother after 17 years

Ameneh could touch her child after 17 years

I wish the grapes would ripen

Amoo River would bring up his best-looking sons

Hendookosh Mountain would free her daughters.

For a moment

Guns would forget to tear apart

Knives, to slash open

Pens would write “fire” as “ceasefire”.

I wish mountains would reach each other

Sea would reach up to the sky 

and steal her moon

Leopards and gazelles 

Would go drinking together.   

I hope the drunkenness will touch all things  

The windows will break the walls

and you

While embracing your beloved tightly

Would remember me.

My darling

My faraway friend

Drink another cup with me

To all the vineyards 

Overflowing with grapes.